Summary

Heitaria Swiss AG requests 190,000 USDT over six months to build the payout rail for Decidimos on Polkadot Hub.

Decidimos is the app through which the department of Potosí, Bolivia decides how its share of the Uyuni lithium project is spent. The contract ring-fences 15% of the private partner’s profits for the department: about US$104 million a year, US$4.4 billion over the project’s 45 years, for around 860,000 residents. The decision side is built and in closed beta with the 53 indigenous communities of the TIOC Nor Lípez, in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The wallet runs on Polkadot mainnet and the first residents have paid a shop with it. What does not exist yet is the payout rail at scale.

Discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/18650

What Polkadot gets

• Around 860,000 residents paid every month: about 10.3 million payouts a year by Heitaria.
• On top of that, the payments residents make themselves with that money: shops, transfers, cash-out. At three a month that is about 31 million more, so about 41 million transactions a year in total (model in post 9 of the thread).
• About US$104 million a year in USDT settled on Asset Hub at full scale.
• About 43,000 DOT bought by Heitaria to activate the residents’ wallets (0.05 DOT each, once), plus DOT for the payout fees every month.
• Children's savings partly in DOT: 30% of every minor's monthly share stays locked until their 18th birthday. Part of that locked amount is used to buy DOT, which is staked on Polkadot until the child turns 18. This makes Decidimos a long-term buyer and staker of DOT, not only a user of Asset Hub.
• Real users, not incentive farmers. The money exists because a factory produced lithium and a contract obliges the operator to pay the department.

What has already been done

• Signed memoranda (24 October 2026) with CUPCONL, the organisation of the 53 communities of the TIOC Nor Lípez, and with the community of Río Grande. Both make Decidimos the mandatory channel for all per-capita payments and all allocations of the community funds, from the first allocation onwards.
• Governance platform live in closed beta with 53 indigenous communities.
• Identity checked once against the national cédula, secret ballots, public audit trail.
• Our wallet, tested with the communities on testnet and now running on Polkadot Asset Hub mainnet. Manuals in English and Spanish: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eRQli3dPzy_fXJbGgEJcYZMcAYr2pbJc?usp=sharing
• App live on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6809736620. Android in Google Play testing. Testers welcome: schmidt@heitaria.ch
• First real USDT payments on Polkadot mainnet: two Decidimos users paid Mini Market Lithium in Río Grande (October 2026): https://assethub-polkadot.subscan.io/account/1xq6PespsBdhiXakyxCKMEfBYtFP6GaQxLgbG6X6ByxGuTC?tab=transfer

Videos from Río Grande

• The payment: a customer scans the shop’s QR code and pays in USDT: https://youtube.com/shorts/i6qPcBWznwk
• The shop receives it: https://youtube.com/shorts/Aw5ewRIo3Ec
• The balance: 7.00 USDT in the shop’s wallet: https://youtube.com/shorts/iG7jrXJhD3c

What this grant pays for

Wallet

We use our own wallet. It was first built for testing with the indigenous communities, and it now runs on Polkadot mainnet, where the first residents have paid a shop in Río Grande with it. The external audit covers it before payouts scale up.

The reason: payouts run for the 43–45-year life of the plant, and the sponsor needs the wallet to be maintained for that whole period. We can only promise that for software we build and maintain ourselves. The code is open source.

What this grant does not pay for

• Long-term maintenance. Heitaria maintains the payout engine and keeps the wallet working for the 43–45-year life of the plant, funded by the sponsor, not by the treasury. The code is open source, so it never depends on us alone.
• Fees. Heitaria pays the fees for the monthly payouts. Residents pay the fee for their own payments in USDT, deducted from their wallet, so no resident ever has to buy DOT. The treasury pays no fees.
• DOT for each account. Heitaria sends each new wallet 0.05 DOT to activate it on chain. For around 860,000 residents that is about 43,000 DOT, once, paid by Heitaria, not by the treasury.
• The governance platform. It is already built.

Reporting

After each milestone we post a public update in the forum thread covering what shipped, the contract addresses and what failed. From milestone 1 we publish the real fee per transaction, replacing the estimate in post 9. All code is open source, so the next extractive project inherits a rail rather than a debate.

Timing

The plant runs a pilot from year 3 and the main plant from year 6, so the volume figures above are the steady state. The Río Grande pilot payout happens inside the grant period.

Team

Heitaria Swiss AG, Rigistrasse 1, 6374 Buochs, Switzerland, trading since 2013.
Paul Schmidt (CEO), Willi Brose (co-founder).
Project sponsor: ACI Systems Alemania, with German export credit cover (Euler Hermes / UFK).
schmidt@heitaria.ch · +41 78 339 59 77